Lyden,
permitting a faint smile to twitch the foxy moustache, "how Mrs. Darcy's
boot affected her finger?"

William's skinny hand covered his frog mouth with all a deserving
schoolboy's embarrassment at being caught out in a bad translation.

"I beg yer worships' pardon," he said, in deep confusion, "but sure your
worships know as well as meself that in Irish we have the one word for
your finger or your toe."

"There's one thing I know very well anyhow," said Dr. Lyden, turning to
his colleague, "I've no more time to waste sitting here talking about
old Kit Darcy's fingers and toes! Let the two o' them get arbitrators
and settle it out of court. There's nothing between them now only the
value of the sheep."

"Sure I was satisfied to leave it to arbithration, but Darcy wasn't
willin'." This statement was Sweeny's.

"So you were willin' to have arbithration before you came into coort at
all?" said Mr. Heraty, eyeing the tall defendant with ominous mildness.
"William, ask Darcy is this the case."

Darcy's reply, delivered with a slow, sarcastic smile, provoked a laugh
from the audience.

"Oh, ho! So that was the way, was it!" cried Mr. Heraty, forgetting to
wait for the translation. "Ye had your wife's cousin to arbithrate!
Small blame to Darcy he wasn't willin'! It's a pity ye didn't say your
wife herself should arbithrate when ye went about it! You would hardly
believe the high opinion Sweeny here has of his wife," continued the
Chairman in illuminative excursus to Dr. Lyden; "sure he had all the
women wild below at my shop th' other night sayin' his wife was the
finest woman in Ireland! Upon my soul he had!"

"If I said that," growled the unfortunate Sweeny, "it was a lie for me."

"Don't ye think it might be a good thing now," suggested the
indefatigable doctor, in his mournful tuneful voice, "to call a few
witnesses to give evidence as to whether Mrs. Michael Sweeny is the
finest woman in Ireland or no?"

"God knows, gentlemen, it's a pity ye haven't more to do this day," said
Sweeny, turning at length upon his tormentors, "I'd sooner pay the price
of the sheep than be losin' me time here this way."

"See, now, how we're getting to the rights of it in the latter end,"
commented Dr. Lyden imperturbably. "Sweeny began here by saying"--he
checked off each successive point on his fingers--"that the sheep wasn't
Darcy's at all. Then he said that his children of eight and nine years
of age were too young to se